OFDM communication has been chosen for most of the modern high-data rate communication systems (Digital Audio Broadcast—DAB, Terrestrial Digital Video Broadcast—DVB-T, and Broadband Radio Access Networks—BRAN such as HIPERLAN/2, IEEE802.11a, for example). However, in most cases the receiver needs an accurate estimate of the channel impulse response.
In many known OFDM systems, each OFDM symbol of size NεN+ is preceded by a guard interval that is longer than the channel impulse response (CIR) and a cyclic prefix of DεN+ samples is inserted as the guard interval at the transmitter, the prefix consisting of D samples circularly replicated from the useful OFDM symbol time domain samples. The cyclic prefix enables very simple equalisation at the receiver, where the cyclic prefix is discarded and each truncated block is processed, for example using Fourier Transform (usually Fast Fourier Transform), to convert the frequency-selective channel output into N parallel flat-faded independent sub-channel outputs, each corresponding to a respective sub-carrier. For equalisation purposes, numerous strategies exist. Following the zero forcing approach, for example, each sub-channel output is, unless it is zero, divided by the estimated channel coefficient of the corresponding sub-carrier.
Like other digital communication systems, OFDM modulation encounters problems at high Doppler spreads, which occur notably when the user is moving fast, for example in a car. HIPERLAN/2, for example, was designed to work only up to speeds of 3 m/s (“pedestrian speed”). Accordingly, the channel impulse response needs to be constantly tracked and updated, especially in the presence of high Doppler spreads.
In a known OFDM communication system pilot tones are added which may change their position from one OFDM symbol to another. The amplitudes and positions of the pilot tones are known to the receiver. The receiver uses the pilot tones to estimate the channel coefficients of the corresponding carriers. This method is widely used, but it degrades the system performance, since a certain number of carriers cannot be used for data, since they are reserved for the pilot tones.
It is also known to add learning sequences (See for example EBU Review Technical No. 224, August 1987, “Principles of modulation and channel coding for digital broadcasting for mobile receiver”, by M. Alard and R. Lassalle.). In HIPERLAN/2, for example, there are at least 2 learning OFDM symbols per frame (i.e. 2 OFDM symbols of 2·4 μs duration in total per 2 ms). If the channel changes quickly, there must be many more training sequences and the consequence is an even bigger degradation in the system performance.
Many of the known systems are unable to decode all carriers of OFDM symbols in the presence of channel nulls. Recent innovations propose ways for decoding OFDM symbols even in the presence of channel nulls (see for example the publication entitled “Reduced Complexity Equalizers for Zero-Padded OFDM transmissions” by B. Muquet, Marc de Courville, G. B. Giannakis, Z. Wang, P. Duhamel in the proceedings of the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing (‘ICASSP’) 2000 and the publication entitled “OFDM with trailing zeros versus OFDM with cyclic prefix: links, comparisons and application to the HiperLAN/2 system” by Muquet, B.; de Courville, M.; Dunamel, P.; Giannakis, G. in the proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2000, Volume: 2. However, these publications do not offer responses to the problems referred to above concerning channel estimation and channel tracking.
Ideally, the OFDM modulation system would keep all the advantages of classic OFDM and additionally allow very simple and completely blind channel estimation at the receiver. No additional redundancy would be added to the system and therefore no bandwidth would be lost. Such a system would be advantageous in low-mobility scenarios and would make OFDM systems applicable to high-mobility scenarios as well.
Many of the examples and illustrations presented below are based on the assumption N=4·D, that is to say that the size of the prefix (D samples) is assumed to be one quarter of the size of the useful OFDM symbol (N samples). This corresponds to the case of HiperLAN/2 or IEEE802.11. This restriction is introduced for sake of simplicity only. It will be appreciated that the examples and illustrations are applicable more generally to the case of NεN+, DεN+, the necessary adaptation being basically straightforward.